050 Three Times We See Better Without Looking

This is Dr. Torrey. Welcome to the Influence Every Day show, where we make every day better and we influence for good. Sometimes it's possible to see better without looking. What? Well, you've heard the phrase where attention goes, energy flows. We all have heard this phrase. We know that if we're trying to focus on something, if we put attention to it, all of our energy goes toward that thing and we sort of forget about some of the other things, right? Or the more we put our attention on something, the more important it seems, the more important it becomes, the bigger it seems. And it's like that, where attention goes energy flows. And we know that sometimes we need to turn down one load of sensory input so that we can focus on a different sensory input. For example, you're driving down the road and you're trying to find an address, but the podcast or music or whatever you're listening to is too loud. You turn it down. You turn down the volume while you look for an address or you look for a location. So you're turning down the hearing inputs so that you can increase or focus on or pay more attention to what you're seeing. The same thing goes in the other direction. Sometimes you're trying to focus on sounds, and so you might close your eyes or you might stand still, even sometimes stop breathing. Actually, that's one of the signs. You sometimes see a dog or a cat. When they sense something is going on, they might stop breathing briefly and they focus on their hearing. They'll look in one spot, they won't actually turn their eyes somewhere, and they'll just focus on their hearing. So this is what happens. Normally when we want to focus on something, we sometimes turn down the other inputs. In fact, the inverse of this is mentioned in another podcast, where if you want to decrease anxiety or anger or other high energy negative emotions, you can overload your senses with what you see, what you hear. It's called 54321. 54321 is an exercise where you basically saturate your senses so that what you were paying attention to, the anxiety, the fear, the anger, whatever you were paying attention to, is saturated and diminished. But I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the inverse of that. You want to focus on something, you want to see something. Sometimes we turn down the hearing inputs, we turn down the feeling and touch inputs so that we can see better. But now I'm telling you, sometimes we see better by not looking. Let me explain. In low light, there's one strategy. In bright light, there's Another strategy. And in high complex environments, there's another. So in low light situations, that is seeing in the dark. This is a strategy well known to people who looked at stars, who navigated the seas night to chart their course across the ocean. It's well known in the domain of astronomy that sometimes you need to look in the periphery. You've heard, maybe you remember the anatomy lessons from fifth grade or whenever they were about the eyeball, and that we have cones in our phobia and rods further out in the periphery. And so in fovea, the fovea is where if we want to focus attention, it's there. There are about 7 million cones, which are cells that are good for, for the brighter light, the more vibrant colors, et cetera. And then more so in the periphery, where it's not the fovea or the area of focus in the periphery, in the back of your eye are rods. And these are better for seeing in low light. And so what happens is, since they are in the periphery and they're better in low light, what stargazers do is they don't look directly at the light, the star or the planet or whatever they're looking for. They look slightly off to the side. They don't focus on the thing so that they can see it. They'll see it better if they're using their rods because it's a low light situation. That's the first thing. So sometimes if you're looking for something in the dark, the best way to find it is to look. But look and pay attention to what you're seeing in the periphery as you're looking around, because that is where you have better vision in low light situations. The second is the opposite. When it's bright light, we tend to squint. When it's bright light, we tend to squint so that we can block out some of the light input and focus on whatever it is we're trying to see. Now. The time to use squinting, though, where it helps you see better by not looking, is when you actually blur. When you squint so much that you start to blur everything. Like you can't even tell what it is. And instead you start to see patterns. So this is a good technique for if you're ever doing one of those Find Waldo puzzles. You squint and you can start to see the thing that stands out, or you're looking for a find out what's different. Those puzzles that used to be in the newspapers and now kids, there are apps and stuff like that for those things. Now, but two pictures that look the same mostly, but there are differences between them. One of the ways to see better is to squint enough that they become blurry, and then you see where they are different. So squinting can sometimes help. It essentially removes the noise and allows you to see patterns. And then the third is that of soft eyes. Soft eyes is when you focus somewhere that is not actually where you want to look. So you imagine, have you ever been talking to somebody, where they're looking at you, but they're looking towards you, but it feels like they're looking beyond you. That's soft eyes. They're not focusing on the thing that's right in front of them. They're focusing on sort of a point in the distance. And in actuality, what they're doing is they're using soft eyes to be able to see more of the picture. So if you look directly in at my nose or my eyes or something, then you can see all the fine details of it. But you might not pay attention to some of the things that are off to the side. With soft eyes, what you do is you do direct your gaze somewhere, but you pay attention to things in the periphery. This is very useful in multiple domains. In counterintelligence or law enforcement. You can imagine if they're there at some sort of large gathering, people are assembled and, and they're trying to see, to protect a celebrity or a politician or just look for suspicious activity. They're not focusing on each individual person that walks by. Instead, they have their eyes in soft eyes mode where they are looking for patterns and for changes without actually focusing on any one individual. When they detect a change, then they zoom in and they look at that for that what's going on at that change area. So the same thing happens in multiple other disciplines. In sports, if somebody's dribbling the basketball, they're driving to the hole they're going to go in and they have to get through all the defenders. And they're also wondering if there's an outlet pass as they're driving into the basket, if they're going to get blocked. They're looking for an outlet pass. They're not turning their head each time to look for each spot. They are actually using soft eyes. Just, just know where people are. They know where their teammates are so that they can dump the ball off. So it happens in sports. It happens like a running back, say, Saquon Barkley, the Philadelphia Eagles fly. Eagles fly. When he makes a cut and he sees a hole that he can run through if he can, he's not looking, focusing on the blades of grass in front of him or the individual players that are blocking for him on the greatest offensive line in all of football, by the way. He's not focusing on those players. He's actually using soft eyes so that he can see scene as it develops and unfolds and where the holes open up so that he can run through them. So it happens all the time in sports. It happens in art and photography. When people are taking photos or painting or creating works of art, they are often not paying attention to fine details of the thing. They're paying attention to how it sits in the setting and all these things. So it's like it's a soft eyes kind of technique to be able to see it differently. Now they toggle back and forth between different types of vision, but nonetheless, soft eyes is a huge piece of their technique. Martial arts. Bruce Lee taking on five or six guys, he's not focusing on any one individual guy. He is using soft eyes to see who's coming from where, what's the movement, what are the patterns, and that's how they can see better. Same thing happens in body language. Same thing. You're doing it all the time when you're driving, by the way, you're paying attention to what's in the periphery. And sometimes you're zoning out. You're not actually paying attention per se. You're thinking about whatever you're listening to or something you have to do. But in that instance, you have soft eyes. And soft eyes allows you to see more. You can see more of the scene when you have soft eyes. And you can practice when you're, let's say the next time you're watching something on a screen, if you think about it, the screen that you're watching is a very small piece of your visual field. If you're looking at the screen, let's say you're watching Netflix, or you're watching YouTube Reels, or you're watching something like that and you're looking at the screen. Keep looking at the screen. But now start to pay attention to what's in the periphery. You'll start to see who's next to you, the furniture, whatever, the lighting, the windows, whatever. You'll start to see all of that. You could always see it, but now you're paying attention to it. So essentially, these are three times we see better without looking. One is by using the periphery to see better in the dark. The other is to squint so that we blur things out and be able to see patterns. And the third is to use soft eyes. Why does this matter? What does this have to do with anything related to influence or communication or rapport? Everything. It has everything to do with it. You may have heard the quote. It's often attributed to Stephen Covey, who wrote Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, but I think it's actually more accurately attributed to Max Planck, who is a quantum physicist and was talking about quantum theory. But essentially the quote is this. It's a powerful one and it's worth thinking about, it's worth actually acting on. It's worth practicing and tweaking and revisiting. The quote is, when we change the way we see things, the things we see change. When we change the way we see things, the things we see change. Wow. How helpful might that be in your relationships? When we change the way we see things, the things we see change. When we change the way we see our relationships, the relationships we see change. How about with your kids? When we change the way we see our kids behavior, our kids behaviors change. Like, it's amazing you can apply this to multiple domains, to other people's behavior, to your relationships with others, to why they did something, why they didn't. Somehow you might feel slighted, but there's probably a better explanation. If you could just see more of the picture like they do in martial arts or sports or photography when they're using soft eyes. If you could just see more of the picture of that person's life, maybe your son or daughter's behavior will make a little more sense. Maybe that person not calling you, oh, that will make a little more sense. Maybe that person that snapped at work had nothing to do with you. When we change the way we see things, the things we see change. I'll see you in the next episode. This is only the end of today's show if you let it be. Who needs to hear what you just heard? Go ahead and share it with them right now. The Influence Every Day podcast is free. We don't sell advertising space, so telling others is the best way to pay us back. But more importantly, it's the best way to pay it forward. If you enjoyed today's podcast, take a moment to rate and review the show. Then check out the additional links and materials that go along with it. They offer more ways to take your influence, your impact, and your relationships to a whole new level. Now go forth and influence for good every day.